New Moon, movie review

The Twilight movie held a greater interest for me compared to the book solely due to the collaborative efforts of talented, inspired and professional artists and actors. It was a pretty movie telling a decent story, despite the insipid source material. I can't say the same for New Moon. Without the delightful newness of lovely if popcorn imagery, I must cast a more critical eye on the film making itself. While still a visually satisfying canvas, the performances by the cast felt ingenuous, stilted and lethargic, as if everyone DMX'd like eight graders before hitting their marks. I've decided the arduous pauses and poor blocking are the result of the teen-movie money shots; Edward's hair and Jacob's abs. Any scene lacking those elements doesn't suck so poorly.

Sex plays just an awkward a role. While the slicked up werewolf boys flex around like wayward Abercrombie & Fitch models, Bella and every other female character, even the dangerous Victoria, angst about swathed head to foot in layers of department store fall fashions, (come see the appropriate side of Sears!) While this is preferable to the early sexualization of American girls, the lack of balance invites a hairy eyeball at the double-standard of female sexuality. Unless she's diving off a cliff or fleeing across the globe to save her ex, Bella's choices are made for her. She's not allowed to claim anything for herself; not her body, her sexuality, her boyfriend, her mortality or her marriage.

God love the Mormons and their Bible fan fiction religion, I can't stand these themes in literature and I despise seeing them on screen.

The pop-movie generator churns on, assembling all the pieces that make a successful box office and throwing them together. The soundtrack rocks, the special effects are getting better, (though I am always going to be picky about my sympathetic monster effects. And by picky, I mean snobbishly unsatisfied,) and the color palette of Forks vs. Volterra is gorgeously contrasted. But the formula is starting to show and no amount of geometry is going to justify its continued use if movie is the only thing sucking in a vampire story.

Faking it: Chapters 20-24 and Epilogue

The first section of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love chronicles her adventures in Italy where she speaks Italian, eats herself out of shape and generally finds oneness amidst the ancient city of Rome and surrounding countryside. Having merely read those chapters and peeked at the Wikipedia article for Volterra, I already appear to know more than Meyer about Italy. For example, there is no such fucking thing as a vampire-themed festival of Saint Marcus. The use of it feels shoehorned into the dramatic backdrop for the sake of theme, a concession Meyer never bothered with in this or the last book before. Abruptly dragging the setting out of Washington and then not utilizing preexisting concepts in a nation known for political corruption, mafia strong-arming and one notable, failed attempt at Fascism, in favor of a make-believe vampparty is sadder than the allied bombing of abbey at Monte Cassino. Why not Rome, so close to the papal seat in Vatican City, thereby elaborating on Edward's fear of losing his soul and allowing the Volteri to exist like the worm in the apple of the holiest place on earth? Oh, because Meyer is a hack.

A constipated force of tension takes us into Chapter 20 as Bella elbows her way through the festival crowd to stop Edward from making his body-glitter appearance. Please remember that a lot of people are in costume for this shindig, up to and including plastic fangs. I don't know about you, but when I'm at this breed of goth party and someone shows up shirtless and shiny, I either a). Find the guy who slipped me a roofie, or b). Shrug it off as some sort of attention-getting costume and take of my shirt. (I might not glitter, but these nips are epic!) But this is Edward's emo brilliant plan to off himself. Bella clothelines herself on him and convinces him to hide back in shadow before the Volteri show up, which they do anyway.

Alice blows in just as the smack starts talking and the tension mounts before flagging suddenly when the hero of Canton, a man they call Jane arrives and they all blithely follow her into the sewers. A reason is given, eighteen pages later, that Jane's mental powers allow her to incite unfathomable pain upon anyone she looks at. But not for her boring-as-Mormon-missionary-position name. Meyer drops more description on the convoluted path to the Volteri throne room than on the rest of nation of Italy because clearly it isn't interesting enough to note. Further, Bella's whining narrative kicks up to grate nails down my mental chalkboard. Her greatest concern as the mysterious vampires escort them deeper and deeper into their clutches? Whether or not Edward still wants her or is protecting her out of a sense guilt.

No fair. Vampires can't read her mind but I HAVE TO!

Shit happens in the court of the Volteri, but it lacks any substance, depth, genuine tension or style. For your sake, pick up any Anne Rice book, (they lack real difference between them, so whatever,) and insert any sequence where a group of vampires meet and greet (and eat), and you'll be better off. For kicks, try this with any Laurell K. Hamilton book and maybe take a bold hit off your bong and actually have a good time. In the end, the vamps decree that Bella is neat because her brain chatter interferes with all vampire powers, rendering her immune. Further, she knows too much about vamps to live, so either she stays in Volterra or the Cullens make her a vampire. Vegi-vamps says "Okiedokie" and bail.

Major emotional upsets and character conflicts snare and tangle within the last two chapters. Instead of addressing this, Bella and Edward snuggle and don't resolve anything between them for the next ... (flips pages) entire chapter. Instead we once again are treated to two ginormous flights back to Washington and don't make with any dialogue until getting to Charlie's doorstep. Given Meyer's habit of nuking her own pacing by sending characters fleeing over long distances, first to Phoenix, now to Italy, I expect the next book involves a rocket ship.

The rest of the book is a downhill shit-slide. At the poopie end, the Cullens vote to make Bella a vampire on Edward's timetable, Bella is grounded as fuck but still gets to date Edward, and Jacob tries to sell her down the river but opts for a cease-fire because he wuvs her so much. Edward proposes and in the most offensive move to date, Bella rejects the idea of marriage so young (despite desperately flinging herself at his fangs to be made his vampy mistress) and further bemoans the idea of waiting for either of these until she's thirty because that's fucking ancient. To an 18 year-old, yes, but fuck you Bella!

To summarize New Moon, Edward dumps Bella, she writhes in mental anguish and fails to rebound, some stuff with Italy and vampires, Edward and Bella get engaged, and Jacob is thrown over faster than U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker could overturn Proposition 8. Insert witty joke about Team Jacob the underdog here, because I'd rather be drinking.

Exeunt with Hautboys: Chapters 15-19

Let's take stock here of actual threats in the Twilight series thus far.

In the last book, three evilvamps showed up. One of them tried to eat Bella and was squished by the Cullens. The second, Laurent, bailed in the first book but returned in the second to track Bella and down and reveal the last vamp, Victoria, is plotting a grand, bloody revenge against Bella for the death of her mate by the Cullens, (read: above squished.) Then the wolves descended and tore the shit out of him. This leaves one vampire. Just one.

Five werewolves, and arguably an entire tribe of Quileute Indians, verses one vampire with a solitary goal of rendering Bella into a smear and an afterthought. (Bravo, lass!) Why are Meyer's supernatural entities so full of strategy fail? Why must they always split up to go hunting away from their places of safety and numbers and their quarry's singular goal? If the Cullens could count on their fingers with any accuracy in the last book, these vamplings would never be an issue. But no. The werewolves scatter to track Victoria and leave Bella to wander into danger around the homestead with only a handicapable babysitter.

In Chapter 15, Bella's near-death experience comes not at the hands of Victoria, nor from the quintet of newbie werewolves guarding her. Told to remain safely in La Push, Bella decides she needs her hallucinatory Edward fix and jumps off a cliff.

I've argued long and loud that the single most terrible aspect of the Twilight series is the protagonist and narrative voice of Bella. And now I must make it official. Bella is the only real antagonist in these stories of whiny teenager verses self. Again, if this were a complicated cautionary tale about the sexualization of young girls in modern society, even with the Mormon undertones, I would appreciate it. In Joan Jacobs Brumberg's The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, the author discusses the risk of today's feminine youth acting without the protective if prohibitive moral guidelines and supervision once provided by previous generations, and the danger of sexuality introduced to girls lacking the emotional maturity to handle it. Put a pretty vampire face on the preying media trying to sell an adult and idealized body image to teenagers, and you have Twilight: the Sensemaking, the most romantic after-school special ever.

Maybe I'm grasping at straws here. But I can't accept Meyer's books at face value because they suck donkey balls. There must be an undertone, a deep, baseline of theme I'm not grokking. I must justify the attention I'm throwing into this trash in some means or I'm left with only my literary rage to keep me warm against the long stretch of wintry night the next two (plus one novella) books promise.

That or else I'll begin hallucinating Joss Whedon's cautionary snarl, "Crazy crisp dialogue. Incredibly tight plotting. Big emotion." and "Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck."

Oh, Joss! I'm so lost without you. *sniffle*

Right, Bella tosses herself off a cliff, nearly drowns, and her ass gets rescued by Jacob. During her recovery, she undergoes a complicated analysis of Shakespeare, focusing on Paris from Romeo and Juliet, and trying to determine if Romeo dumped his rebound Capulet for Rosalind, would Juliet shack up with Paris. The answer is a resounding I DON'T FUCKING CARE! Yeah, we get it. Jacob isn't your first greatest love. But you should grow a spine and try to move on and be happy because that's life and it only gets worse, so find the fuzzy that makes you happy and fuck it relentlessly.

Also, if Jules hadn't taken vows with Romeo, I do see her retreating back into the safety of her family and marrying Paris, hating Montagues, and raising the next generation of Verona gang bangers. Romeo would trip from one emotional high to the next until he finally shacks up with Mercutio and finds true slashy love. And then gets killed by Verona gang bangers. Jerk.

Bella can't make a decision, even when Jacob gives up on gentle reasoning and takes a page from the previous book and goes for the sweeping emotional gesture and tries to kiss her. They are predictably fashionably interrupted by the appearance of Alice Cullen. Why Jacob doesn't lay into that one out of spite and claim his vacillating bride, I don't know. But he leaves so Alice can roll out the plot contrivance of the book. Her visions showed Bella leaping off a cliff but nothing else. Instead of keeping this to herself, she tells Rosalie who then tattles to Edward, who takes his Claudio act further and not only claims responsibility for Hero's Bella's death, but decides he too must die.

The audience goes wild.

For some reason, Bella decides she has to stop this shit, so the "snapping narrative" is reduced to a crawl to accommodate a trans-Atlantic flight to Italy. Why? Because instead of waltzing back to Forks and throwing himself to the very capable wolves in a thematic display of contrition for Bella's death, Edward jaunts off to beg death at the hands of the only (other) vampire family in the world, the Volturi. The who? Yeah, they got some mention in Twilight in a conversation better suited for making out. Chapter 19 ends with her and Alice and a stolen car arriving in Volterra, just before the strike of noon when Edward plans on outing himself to the crowd and forcing the Volturi to end him.

Gee, I wonder if she'll make it on time?

Flat tire! Flat tire! Flat tire!

Don't Angst So Close to Me: Chapters 9-14

I will say this for Bella. She gets shit on by men a lot.

All this quality time with Jacob not only mends Bella's broken heart, but incites guilt. Like any teenager who has never been in love, Bella assumes her emotional baggage is some form of lifelong curse and actively refers to herself as "damaged goods." I did this when I was sixteen. I couldn't tell you why. Her habit of mental flagellation continues, now focusing on her sin of feeling better about her life and being with a boy. Even her recurring, wake-up-screaming nightmares of loss persist like they did for every gothy heroine I wrote while I was “damaged goods”. (Her name was Raven. Always.)

During a woefully contrived group date, Jacob decides BFFing doesn't help sling the man meat and tells Bella how he feels. She turns him down and he doesn't mind. In fact, he promises not to stop hounding after her sweet, skinny, white ass and in fact swears he will resolutely defend her for evarz. Then he stops returning her calls. Big shocker.

Bella convinces herself he's been brainwashed instead of chasing more accessible tail. In a fit of neuroses she decides to secretly confront him. (Hooray for caution!) Before leaving, Charlie makes her swear she won't go anywhere near the forest, since people are being eaten by bears near daily. She promptly wanders out into the woods and trips over one of the evil vamps from the last book. Bella would find good work in slasher flicks.

A bunch of ginormous wolves chase the evilvamp off before he can sink fang into her. Every time Bella does something stupid that leaves her exposed, shit happens. Edward accused her of this in the first book. I thought he was being cute. No, it's a staple of the Twilight experience; stupid Bella tricks. If this were a tabletop RPG, Bella's player would roll straight 1's for Wisdom checks. I haven't seen a character lead into rape-able situations by the plot so overtly since Dragon Pink. (Mostly because I'm behind on my H.)

Bella finally catches up with Jacob and finds out he's a werewolf and he wasn't dissing her because she wouldn't put out. No, really. And now that she's got the skinny on the local vampire issues, she's part of the wolfgang.

… teehee!

Old Ass-Hat, New Moon: Chapters 1-8

I apologize for the delay in jumping back into the Approaching Twilight project. But one must cleanse one's creative palate. I did so by diving into the multitudinous oeuvre represented in the Borders in-store catalogue; Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert, Scott Pilgrim vs the World vol. 1-3 by Bryan Lee O'Malley, and the previously pimped How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. Thus armed with my memory of quality prose and creative amusement, I sallied forth into the sequel, New Moon.

Keeping with previously established form, Meyer fails to write an introduction that gives a damn about the rest of the book. Chapter 1 reacquaints the reader with the droll, nails-on-chalkboard narrative voice of Bella and her addiction to her martyrdom, angst and demigodboyfriend. She suffers a nightmare in which Edward macks on an ancient version of herself and proceeds to fixate upon her eighteenth birthday as some form of rite of passage into old age. While a coming-of-age story would inject some literary credence to Meyer's storytelling, this lasts long enough for Bella to selfishly spazz on anyone who tries to celebrate her birthday, because being shown attention and affection when one reaches legal age is horrible!

I hate Bella.

At least the awkward birthday party at the Cullen's ends with bloodshed. Jasper, the newest recruit to vegi-vamp central, loses his shit when Bella slices her hand open on a papercut and winds up at the bottom of a WASPy dogpile. Bella flings herself into a glass table and gets stitched and preached by Doc Cullen while the others cover their mouths and noses as if Bella were a walking pile of sun-rotted diapers. (I feel this way a lot, too.) Despite all this, Bella continues to beg Edward to make her a bloodsucker so she won't have to grow old while he remains Highlander-hot and young. His response to this? Dump the bitch.

Hooray for Edward.

What follows is a surprisingly clever piece of presentation. After the initial crisis of Edward leaving her and Bella wandering Ophelia-like until being rescued, the chapter ends and the next page reads October. Turning, the next reads November, the next December, with the story not picking up until January. I liked this a lot. As someone who has survived a crisis so life-churning that reality fades into gray for months at a time, this resonates honestly.

Of course, then the story picks back up and sucks on down the block.

Chapter 4 begins with Bella's father Charlie threatening to ship Bella back to her mother in Florida, because that's how he shows he cares. Bella's autopilot begins to waver when she hallucinates Edward's voice when she waltzes into potentially dangerous situations. Clamoring for her fix, Bella flings herself into ever more dangerous situations, heedless and selfless until she discovers the true meaning of the life she so callously tried to spend on Edward carefully crafts a plan of reckless behavior so no one will notice. That's exactly how a closeted, martyr-prone teenager acts when she finally rebels. With caution.

However, as previous stated in plot-contrivance-land, her antics do fling her at rebound-boy Jacob who is more than happy to indulge her not-so wild behavior. While inching forward in her mad-cap race for Edwardian reminders, Bella starts living.

And as someone dragged along behind this train wreck of adolescence like a Pekingese tethered to a mobile home, I'm gladdened by the smoother path Bella takes up. She's proactively chasing down her future, hanging out with a living boy who likes her because she's a girl and not forbidden fruit, and recovering her solidarity a piece at a time from the shards of heartbreak.

Good for you, baby. Try not to fuck it up like you do.

Twilight, movie review

My overall reaction to the Twilight movie does not deviate overmuch from that of the book, with the notable exception of exemplary creative collaboration. Coming from a theatrical background, I appreciate the artistic process that occurs when a team of creative professionals throw down with a vision, a budget and a deadline. If one could excuse the source material entirely for the crimes against storytelling, Twilight on film is a satisfying experience. Grand cuts are taken to the dialogue and entire scenes are either tightly edited or excised entirely, leaving us with a rush of first romance beneath the stain of horror. The performers brought qualities to the characters left bereft in written form and made them memorable and sympathetic. Only the special effects marred what otherwise defied my expectations as a quality adaptation to a shitty book.

Still, the tale of a neurotic teenager hooking up with a castrated vampire in the first glimmers of hormone-fevered romance incites bowel obstructing, head-desking, loathsome revulsion in me. No amount of honest body language and heroic hair product could distract me from the kitten-weak premise and insomnia-curing plot. The filmmakers solve the problem of pointlessness until the third act by introducing the evil vampires early and spinning the romance under a constant threat of actual vampires. This validates Edward's genuine fear that his animalistic infatuation with Bella will override his willpower and destroy her, and he will love every minute. Robert Pattison's performance wholly reads as something not human, desperately wrestling with his identity as a monster. Meanwhile, Bella's selfishness in the face of reality softens to the mildly offensive behavior of an emotionally needy teenage girl. I still wished an endless deluge of bus collisions to her person, of course.

The small town feel of Forks, WA flagged in the face of metro-students and calculated racial diversity. Swap any tired high school lunchroom or prom sequence with Twilight's and try hard to notice. But mad props go to any movie that features music by Muse, even if it must accompany a baseball sequence. Special effects jarred the overall pleasant visual style with awkward and goofy movement. Popular panned vamp-sparkle looked more infected than exotic, but the golden lens flare carried the halo image convincingly.

I still hated it.

My favorite riff during my drunken tirade in viewing was at the end. “What, is Edward going to go flinging himself out of his backseat later? It is prom.”

Miscellany

Tonight we'll be screening the Twilight movie for review on this blog. There may be a podcast/youtube, but I'm uncertain. It all depends on how funny we are.

Responses to this blog have been informative, but limited. If you are reading this, please let me know if there is continued interest in me continuing on through New Moon and the rest of the Twilight series? As one of my fellow booksellers mentioned to me, "It's all worth it for the train wreck of Breaking Dawn."

So please, drop me a note her to state your presence and interest. And indeed, thank you for reading.

No Fucking Point (Chapters 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and Epilogue)

The journey. Our main character, especially in narrative fiction, undergoes a journey just like every hero in any story from Grecian epics to pop manga. These stories require five basic things, as described by Thomas C. Foster in his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor.

First, there is the Quester. For Twilight, we have Bella. Lonely, anxious, emotionally handicapped and tragically clumsy. She is our heroine at the beginning of her path. Second, a place to go. The book opens with Bella arriving in Forks from Phoenix in order to make her home. So while the journey isn't necessarily one of distance, she is required to make her way in this new life. Third, a stated reason to go. Bella has plenty of these, generally all ejaculated from her martyr complex; preserve and protect her mother's happiness, take care of her father in his solitary life, and distantly to finish high school. Fourth, challenges and trials. Again the majority of these conflicts are born of Bella's own brainfarts and inability to socialize in any healthy way. Vampires are nearly secondary to this conflict, but are worth mentioning. In comparison to the living, the dead seem perfectly acceptable if not attractive. Bella is seduced by a different system of rules, a new way to be a victim. And finally, the fifth requirement, the real reason to go. This is always self-knowledge. Bella's social spasms and backwards romance should harshly, even dangerously reveal the her true self and allow her to understand that she has the choice to be strong, to be solitary, to be alive and moreover to be numbered among the actively living instead of patiently dying.

At the point I left us last, before a convenient antagonist showed up to shoehorn some conflict into the last third of the book, Bella was actively begging Edward to turn her into a vampire. Edward like any man, isn't ready for that kind of commitment with a girl he hasn't slept with doesn't want to take her oh-so fragile life away from her and pop her jugular cherry. But even when she agrees to stop hounding him to take her throatginity, Bella yearns for this eternal life of being a monster, albeit a beautiful and powerful monster with an undying hottie for a boyfriend. I read this and I see a young woman who wants to die before she even starts living. When the evilvamps blow in to murder her, she runs because she is told to. When the evilvamp finds a way to contact her, he tells her to ditch her vampire friends and come to him willingly, or he'll murder her mother. And you know what? She does.

Bella rejects every single life raft, every mote of human companionship and leadership, every instinct that encourages her to stand the fuck up for herself, and walks straight to her death.

I wanted that bitch to die nearly as much as she did.

If your reader's sensibilities aren't frothing as the mouth yet, let's continue through the climax! Meyer's evilvamp is … oh wait, she never describes him. I can't even remember his name. When Bella waltzes into her deathtrap, the bad guy can't even be given an interesting visualization or monologue. He merely threatens vaguely at the doom awaiting her mother. "Stuff will happen! There will be things! OoooooOOOOOooh!" Way to castrate your villains, Steph.

When it comes murderin' time, Evilvamp doesn't conceive of a terrifying test of her will or haunting series of questions like Anton Chuguhr in No Country for Old Men. He doesn't revel in her fear or debasement by threatening her with horrifying trauma and listening to her beg and weep, like the assassin in the book version of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. No pseudo-crucifixion like Fiore's in the Sailor Moon R Movie, no elaborate death trap the likes of any James Bond villain. The best he can do is a dance studio, a VCR and the Bobby Brown school of ho-slapping. Bella breaks her leg falling into mirrors, which may or may not be the bad guy's fault, and generally gets her ass kicked. Finally, he bites her hand to inject the excruciating vampire venom into her system.

Yes, her hand. Not her throat, not her breast, not the naughty femoral artery. Her dainty little hand. He can't even bite off a few of her fingers for good measure before Edward shows up and kills him OFF SCREEN.

Because the climax of this story isn't about the ignoramus telling it to us, it's the god of all things sexy and divine Edward deciding if he will test his own control by sucking the venom from her hand. (Her fucking hand? Really?!) If he fails, he drinks her dry and leaves her a a sad, deflated blow-up doll. Or he could wuss out and allow her three days of writhing agony before she dies and becomes a fellow vampire, just like she's been begging him all this time.

I … I can't even go on. We know what happens, despite how it should have happened. He saves her, she recovers and he fucking takes her to prom and they STILL DON'T HAVE SEX. The End. I hate you, Stephanie Meyer. Do us a favor and go eat a cannoli, fuck off and die in a fire. I loathe your book because it only teaches girls their value in is what they can sacrifice to others, specifically men, and should be thankful for what they get out of it. This is not love. This is systemic abusive control of women.

Twilight is trash beneath a sugary veneer masquerading as romance. I wouldn't use the paper to wipe my ass.

Thinking About Baseball Won't Help (Chapters 17, 18 and 19)

Conflict. Without it, there is no reason to tell a story. Thus far in Twilight, we've had little genuine conflict other than Bella's paranoid anxiety that everyone BUT the vampires is out to get her. However, Chapter 17 unfurls an engaging background issue that deserves so much more attention than it gets. Even accepting that I as the reader haven't seen the trailers for New Moon and somehow escaped the inanity of Team Edward of the bloodsucker set verses Team Jacob the fuzzy and wolfish, the fact remains the Cullens brokered a peace treaty with the local Native Americas on the reservation in Forks a few generations ago. This means Jacob's father, Billy "Meals on Wheels" Black, not only knows the Cullens are vampires, but like his fathers before him, doesn't trust them any farther than he can throw them. The Indians clearly delineated their territory from the undead in exchange for not whistle-blowing and triggering a good old fashioned angry mob.

For years, the Cullens lived within Forks, but apart. Like any good recovering alcoholics, they know better than to hang out in the liquor store for any length of time. Now, the batshit crazy daughter of the white folk's police chief is dancing her seventeen year-old single malt self around one of the AA boys. Black knows it only takes one drink to drop the lot of them off the good vampire bandwagon. After that, it's on like Donkey Kong; wholesale hunting and murder, pitchfork and torch-wielding justice. I could see the younger generation of Native Ameriwolves going for it on the pretense of getting enemies to slaughter the white folk who took their land. But the older, wheelchair-bound ones know better than to invite the Feds to a situation, risking more land getting seized and the loss of all those handicap accessible places like Walmart and McDonalds.

This story here is interesting! But it's not the one that gets told. No, instead Bella comes home and finds Black and Jacob on her porch like cigar store Indians (in a wheelchair). Faced with the survival of his tribe, his land, and the white folk of Forks, Black approaches to give her the vaguest warning imaginable. Bella, like any brainless, romance-addicted ingenue, resists his advice and intimidates (??!!!) him and his son off her property. Really. When Charlie gets home, Bella fills her father's ears with lies and then introduces Edward. This scene too, promising all kinds of thematic elements, falls as flat as Calista Flockhart.

The book wholly limits itself with Bella's narrative. The stories I want to hear are bullied out of the way by the insipid, sexless romance. Where is the win here?

It bears mentioning that Meyer takes one last chance at giving EsmeDaphne a personality. Sometime during the next scene, Bella is approached by the motherly vampire, who tells her randomly that her baby died in childbirth and that's why she jumped off a cliff. I can totally see Jane Leeves doing this and owning every awkward moment. But just as I feared, vampire baseball is exactly as mind-numbing as major league baseball. Thank god the evil vampires show up. And, oh surprise! They want to eat Bella.

Bookwench: Oh hi, conflict! It's been so long since you've had a part to play in this rancid, sad sack of shit. Now that the three new evil vampires are here and plan on cracking the wax on Bella's single-malt, what are the other five good vampires going to do about it, on their home turf?

XTwyLyteRavynXFTW: OMGWTFBBQRUN!!!1one!!!1! lol

I once played in a table-top game called Slasher Flick in which the players are rewarded for actions that contribute to their characters dying; like fleeing up the stairs from the killer, or wandering off alone to take a shower. Seriously, even when the math changes and one of the evil vamps cuts his losses and bails, the Cullens decide splitting up and running with Bella for Phoenix is a good idea. Hunt in packs, jackasses! *hurls popcorn at the screen*

This plan requires Bella not only go home first to pack her belongings, (despite her lack of beloved mementos or vital possessions. There must be no Old Navy's in Phoenix,) but to convince Charlie she is leaving Forks for a benign reason, like hating her life and wanting to be her own person without the constant fetters of familial duty and social martyrdom move back in with her mom. Every moment Bella lacks Edward's presence, she nics hardcore, which should make the moment she chooses to willingly hurt her father and call upon his memories of his wife's divorce to sell her intent, both riveting and heartbreaking.

Lacking that, at least it's brief.

The manly hunting team of Edward, Niles and Lion-O go to track down the evil vampire dude. Daphne and Lindsey Lohan go after the evil vampire dude's evil vampire bitchy girlfriend. And Bella flees with Moaning Myrtle and the Rock as they speed towards the safety of a sunny, desert city, four states away. Even driving at vampire speeds, a thousand miles is no short distance and stopping for road beers doesn't seem likely. Good thing they brought Bella.

Lame Expectations (Chapters 14, 15 and 16)

I firmly believe that one's greatest weakness is also, in turn, one's greatest strength. This goes for vampire stories. Capturing an honest personality affected by decades upon decades of development proves a serious challenge. This crowns as the golden moment of awesome for the writer. Not only can one find the coolest stories in history to attribute to the beloved vampire, but it allows for period flashbacks and amusing colloquialisms to sneak into speech patterns. Impossible questions become endless opportunities; Edward lived through the roaring twenties, the great depression, two world wars, the rise of the atomic age, the British invasion on the music scene, the Civil Rights movement, Women's Liberation, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the rise of corporate greed and the fall of the Twin Towers. The passage of time and the frailty of life is no more distant from him than the lifeblood that rushes to his beloved Bella's face when she blushes beneath his gaze.

So what does Stephanie Meyer do?

If you guessed FAIL, you win a gold star.

On the way back from their unromantic romp in the forest, Edward rags on music not recorded in the 50's. Really. Keep in mind, he's still a violently disposed teenager who lectures Bella on her wisdom and then gets her alone in the forest for a chat. I feel my fanfic senses tingling here when the only creative works or artists mentioned in the Twilight universe are Wuthering Heights and Debussy. Even when Bella listens to the mix CD one of the Ron Weasly's made for her, there are no band names or song lyrics. Just noise.

Further, Meyer decides to introduce Edward's family to the reader without them actually being in the scene. So not only are we bereft of descriptions and body language to help us retain each individual character, there are five of them, we get to hear Edward's brief synopsis. I don't know who these fuckers are and am well beyond caring. Thing is, I'm nervous that it's going to be important to the remaining half of the book I have yet to sift through.

Edward doesn't sleep. And since he has no reason to break his regular habit of stalking Bella and watching her in bed, he doesn't. Bella spends the rest of the chapter spinning lies to her understandably untrusting father about why she's home, where she's been and why she isn't attending the socially acceptable school dance with the living. Once abed, she and Edward make with the cringe-worthy snuggles and our first bedroom scene closes as it opens; first base.

The next morning, Edward kisses Bella and she faints. All through this and the drive to meet his family, Bella fizzles and sparks in her addiction-fueled haze of frenetic mental gyration. Edward once mentioned that he can't read Bella's thought, and I believe this is due to the storm of interference clouding her synaptic actions from his vampESP. And fuckit, Edward taking Bella to meet is family is the equivalent of bringing a gigantic bottle of scotch into an AA meeting.

Since I'm failing so hard at keeping the individual vampire siblings straight, I will once again chose images from pop culture. Already, we have Dr. Carlisle Cullen played by Niles Crane. Let's just make his main squeeze Esme look like Daphne since she has no real defining character traits as it is. Next is Alice, the slightly batty seeress vampire with a pixie voice, as played by Shirley Henderson of Moaning Myrtle fame. (If you haven't seen her in "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day", then you must. Also Amy Adams runs around half naked a lot, which should be reason enough.) Jasper is described solely as "tall and leonine", so he's Lion-O. Rosalie was originally meant to be Edward's girl and is as such another catty bitch, so I'm leaning towards the soon-to-be incarcerated Lyndsey Lohan. Finally we have Emmett, cut like a cheese-grater and twice as shiny. Enter Dwayne Johnson's the Rock.

God grant this may give ease to the suffering that approaches; Vampire Baseball. As if Twilight needed to be any more boring.

Hemorrhaging Interest (Chapters 10, 11, 12 and 13)

In a concerted effort to complete this Twilight project before I must return my copy to Borders (or risk paying for it. God. No.) today's post covers the next four chapters. I hesitate to admit that the generally readability has increased with the acceleration of teasing romance. But this comes as further insult. Bella and Edward trade awkward banter while deviating heavily from their established characterization thus far. Body language is dominated by soggy descriptive contrivances centering on Edward's forehead; where he looks, how he frowns and what shade of caramel ripple his eyes are today. Essentially, this could represent the blossoming of true self in their shared moments, but I doubt that as much as I do BP's overall success in stopping the wholesale pollution of the ocean.

Bella and Edward start dating. This is an easy statement to make, but not so simple for Stephanie Meyer to write. Every attempt our lovers make at developing a shared understanding of each other is hijacked by neuroses. As if Bella weren't paranoid enough, Edward brings a litany of dangers to the table for her to be mindful of but must press Edward to explain. Unhelpfully, he pops each new horrific revelation about his vampirism up in the worst way imaginable without actually latching onto her throat. Despite his aching fear of hurting her, Edward seems to revel in his wicked if desultory details. It's like the bad boy who offers popcorn to his girlfriend at the movies, having secretly poked his penis through the bottom of the box. I can imagine Edward snickering when Bella grabs a handful of vampirecock and shrieks, glaring hotly when he points at her face and yells, “Gotcha!”

To sum up four chapters of dragging exposition, Edward has a mad, blood-fueled lust for Bella's brand of hemoglobin. In fact, he calls her his kind of heroin, which I cannot say is anything less than shit terrifying. The siren call of her pulmonary squeezins drove him nucking futz since she moved into his town. Edward admits to bailing off-screen, lighting off to Alaska only to decide he's not a pussy and come back to face his desire, divide his vampire family, and date the battiest bitch in Forks. Nice move, dick.

Bella finds a curious strength in the face of all this that I can only assume is her backwards mental programming suffering a fatal error and crashing her entire nervous system. Coasting in safe mode, Bella calmly weathers each and every one of Edward's emo-paroxysms and tempter tantrums. In her few opportunities to be away from him, she proceeds along the familiar tropes of losing her shit over tiny things and analyzing Edward, her father, her friends, and Jacob (given too brief a scene to preserve anything else but a place in the sequel,) and their motivations so furiously she must drug herself with cold medicine in order to sleep.

Yes, that just happened.

Our last chapter opens with the revelation of the oft-mocked "sparkle vampire" effect, accelerates with a display of Edward's strength, speed and
assholishness as he taunts Bella with how helpless she is against him, and culminates with their first kiss. It is by no means epic, save for the fact Bella's babymaker kick starts and initiates the molesting sequence and Edward is forced to stop her.

I hate this book. Perhaps, if it were a darkly romantic cautionary tale about the dangers of impressionable girls being seduced by mysterious, emotional and manipulative men, the latter represented metaphorically by the vampire concept, I might get be able to enjoy the sadistic resonance and ignore the crimes against narrative storytelling. But it isn't, and I can't. Edward is as seductive as a barnacle, reminding me too much of the bi-polar boy who confessed his devout adoration and proceeded to suck the life out me for for five years of marriage.

The same excitement I feel for the completion of my divorce rivals that of reaching the end of Twilight.

You Say Misanthropy, I Say Misogyny. (Chapters 8 and 9)

A solid third of the way through the book, Meyer is finally getting to the big revelation. And I don't care. I writhe with ambivalence. Sheer willpower alone keeps me on task to crack this damn book open, let alone choke down the fetid prose. I approach each pair of chapters like an amateur pornographer in her first film, filled with trepidation, nausea and shame.

This would be a better story if Edward were Batman.

So take the time to mentally adjust your filters, as I have in order to preserve sanity, and tune out Kurt Hummel in favor of Batman, as made popular in the mid-nineties Batman: The Animated Series, which I was in love with when I was Twilight's target audience. All of Edward's dialogue will now be read by Kevin Conroy's dark and midnight voice.

Chapter 8 takes us shopping with Bella and some "girls", out of town. She ditches them in order to spend a wandering hour of meditation on her insane fascination with Edward while trying to find a bookstore. Instead she wanders into a rape gang. Or perhaps just some boys. One can't be too sure. Either way, Bella readies her purse to bust some heads when Edward's Volvothe Batmobile pulls a Tokyo drift and rescues her.

EdwardBatman is furious. So blinded by rage, he orders Bella to entertain him with inanities so his righteous indignation won't send him plowing down the quartet of wandering boys who showed interest in her. Finally, EdwardBatman forces his temper under control, and decides now is a good time to reveal his secret identity.

Okay, maybe Batman wouldn't do that. But for someone desperate to keep his vampirism a deep, dark secret, Edward drops the topic into Bella's lap like a freshly caught catfish and watches her squirm. Not only is he a bloodsucker, he can read minds, complain about how ironic it is that he can't read Bella's thoughts (lucky bastard) and drive recklessly over the speed limit.

That's the true crime in all this, that someone would be stuck as a whiny, insecure, hormonally imbalanced 17 year-old with psychic powers for all eternity.

I think the hipster vampirism is the cause for Edward's fascination with weak-willed women. He comes apart at the seams for the Victorian wilting flower act of Bella's, gratified and aroused by her dainty bound feetpropensity to faceplant. Bella expertly plays into this with a piece of sage wisdom she delivers about his patience.

“But you're not hungry now … I've noticed that people – men in particular – are crabbier when they're hungry.”

Because that's a conversation you want to start with someone who considers you a credible food source. "Oh, it's my fault he's crabby, I've haven't fed him. I'll just remove myself to the kitchen where I feel comfortable. Don't mind my small, womanly feet. They allow me to stand closer to the stove."

Loathe as I am to admit it, as a fan of romantic sequences and dramatic tension, I felt the singular pull of indulgent interest as Edward and Bella revealed their truths to each other, taking up solid and brave roles heretofore un-characterized in the book thus far. Thankfully, Chapter 9 closes as Bella returns home and reflects upon her conversation with a roundhouse to my feminist sensibilities.

“About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him – and I didn't know how potent that part might be – that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.”

Oh, the battered woman's trifecta! Just swap out vampire for violent offender and you're set.

In closing, I would like to share a story one of my friends presented as his Facebook status today.

I'm an asshole? Ok so after small talk with the Taco Bell staff, a woman chimed in with, "My man punched me all over my FACE and broke my glasses." Another stranger added, "I hope he isn't a man anymore!" The woman, I swear to God said, "Nah, I'm still living with him." So I said, "Bet you'll have dinner ready tonight." as I received all kinds of dirty looks.

Holy Exposition, Wolfman! (Chapter 6 and 7)

Today's musical selection is another Lady Gaga, this time “Poker Face,” which I would prefer to do to Bella over the course of these next pair of chapters. At least I was granted a small reprieve in that Edward doesn't make an appearance once, despite being talked about enough to make even a vampire's ears burn.

We begin with another standard of fan-fiction; gender bias. As the lead and narrative voice of Twilight is female, any other characters who are not male will be described as negatively as possible, if at all, and are generalized as selfish, gossiping bitches. I've found this to be a popular choice in otherwise credible fiction, including the very adult, supernatural hackings of Laurell K. Hamilton. Just like little Bella, Hamilton's Anita Blake corners the market on “class and beauty,” with the other girlies can't even be relegated to rival status and instead grovel at the plot table for scraps of dialogue.

Today, the teenagers flock to the beach to socialize, Bella somehow numbered among them for no explicable reason. While awkwardly shooting down her prospects and obsessing over Edward, she meets Jacob, a fifteen year-old American Indian who is fated to doggy-bag Edward's sloppy seconds in the sequel. For now, he's underage despite a deceptively deep voice. (I spent my entire day trying to come up with a visual for Jacob that wouldn't be just another pretty face in a teen movie. Instead I actively failed and chose Steve Strait in his portrayal of Warren Peace from Sky High because he's panties-round-my-ankles hot.)

Someone drops the Cullen name, and Jacob's crew is just as visibly discomfited as I am. Curious and suddenly aware of her femininity, Bella decides to sweet-talk Jacob into telling her more about why Edward, ahem, sucks. However, during the whole adorable scene, she mentally flagellates her already bruised ego for being a liar and leading Jacob on.

Because good Mormons girls only flirt when they mean to marry. Thanks Stephanie Meyer.

Jacob doesn't smell the stank on this one and drops the entire plot on her. To make it even less important or foreshadowed, I'll sum up. Blah-blah-blah werewolves. Blah-blah-blah good vampires. Wanna go steady?

The nuclear fallout of feminine wiles and surprise Nosferatu torment Bella for the entirely of Chapter 7. She withdraws into noise and sensory overload, she is assailed by pointless nightmares, she wanders like an equally gravity-stricken Ophelia into the forest to finally face her fears and decide, once and for all, what she's going to do about Edward. Instead, she doesn't. Do. Anything. After pages upon pages of aching knots of Gordian heartstrings, Bella runs out of steam. The rest of the chapter meanders towards a close with a shopping trip with the placeholder girls that shivved their way to the top of the NPC heap.

Taking the perspective of a deeply affected girl stricken with crippling anxiety, intense paranoia and a shrinking violet cum martyr complex, I can't say I'm looking forward to the inevitable hook-up with the bi-polar bad boy wanna-be. Her first seemingly selfish act in the entire book is a choice to flirt with a guy she's not interested in to get information about the object of her slavish obsession. God may as well have lightning bolted her ass to spare her the guilt trip that followed. Top it all off with a Mormon writer and a pre-teen audience. This will be the sex of MPAA-approved legend.

And Laurell K. Hamilton cackles in her ivory tower, “Where's your iron willpower now, dearie? Anita fucked a leopard! HAHAHAHAH!”

Anne Rice slits her wrists in the only obvious recourse.

There Might Be Blood (Chapters 4 and 5)

Fitting I would have Lady Gaga's “Bad Romance” stuck in my head.

Bella's recurring dream of Edward cops out immediately in the beginning of Chapter 4 without ever once delving into the unconscious mind of a girl so enamored with her martyr complex that she breaks into mental hives at the sudden attention of not one, not two, but three different boys at school. (I haven't bothered to choose images for them yet, as personality traits seem to be in short supply as a rule in Meyer's book. My go-to placeholder for non-Edward male characters is Rupert Grint's Ron Weasley.) But the random doesn't end there. Oh ho, no! Edward spends the next two chapters vacillating between ignoring the fuck out of our preternaturally clumsy heroine and making bi-polar overtures of friendship and sarcasm.

Because even the most mysterious of men don't know what the shit they are doing.

Bella wraps herself in a shroud of lies to avoid attending the wholly anticipated school dance with any of the three boys of indeterminate characterization. Edward, tapping into the apparent hive mind of Forks, WA calls her on her bluff to ditch the dance for a day-trip to Seattle, and invites himself along as her chauffeur. He crooks a finger at lunch one day to summon her to his table, and then teeter-totters banal conversation that he might be dangerous, or maybe he's a bad guy, and that she would be better off avoiding his friendship. Not that its going to stop him, of course.

In response to this heady draught of crazy, our lady of the lame-ass constitution develops a second character trait and passes out at the sight of blood in biology class. One of her dutiful boys takes her to the nurse but is bullied away so Edward can swoop her up and gallantly force medical attention on her, mentally dominate the school administration into letting her leave early for the day, and then man-handle her through the pouring rain to his car with the threat that, even if she runs, he'll just drag her back. At one point he tells her she resembles a corpse. Judging by his seduction methods, he must think she's Courtney Love.

While I appreciate the attempt to inject vague horror themes and a sense of unease into overall storytelling atmosphere, Bella's narrative has been leadfooting the anxiety since page one. Thus, what could be a nuanced threat of the blood-sucking horrors to come is like watching the American version of “The Grudge.” No matter what scene you're in, something is going to jump out and scare the bejeezus out of you for no goddamn reason.

And because I can't have a post without openly mocking Meyer's prose, “Fainting spells always exhausted me.”

Yeah, well diarrhea gives me the runs.

Put a Simile on Your Face (Chapters 2 and 3)

Refreshed from a night of theatre, (Rossum's Universal Robots at Insurgo) I returned to the abandoned second chapter of Twilight. While I fully expect the need to bookend my ventures into Meyer's two-dimensional world of tepid romance with actual storytelling will continue, it is increasingly unfair to my Twilight experience to see the contrast of wit and method to Meyer's excuse for prose.

Written in the 1920's, RUR originated the term "robot" in popular nomenclature and traces the doomed path of humanity as the mortal creators of life. I note this solely because in Karel Čapek's play, he resorts to the storytelling gimmick of characters as archetypes instead of actual people. In doing, he saves the stage time of developing his players and relies on the audience to accept each speaker as a general perspective to move his story. Twilight on the other hand utilizes stilted, unrealistic dialogue to fail at this.

Picking up in Chapter 2, Bella and Edward have their first real conversation in biology class. To the backdrop of examining onion root cells beneath a microscope, Bella finds herself inexplicably opening up to the suddenly convivial Edward. Allow me to compare this properly. Romeo and Juliet traded their first flirtatious banter at the Capulet mansion in the confusion of her parent's party; an expression of civility and hospitality that would not be shown to their union or love. The canon of Notre Dame hired renowned philosopher Peter Abelard to tutor his daughter Heloise at the esteemed church in France; when their love was discovered, she was whisked off to a convent while Abelard was unmanned and spent his life as a monk. Marie and Pierre Curie met at one of the laboratories Pierre worked for while Marie was studying at the Sorbonne and their dedication to science would both define and end their life-long love. Fucking Han Solo meets Princess Leia while rescuing her from the goddamn Death Star; the death mask of Darth Vadar and the promise of world-breaking domination always present int their burgeoning love for the next two movies!

Edward met Bella while examining onion roots in biology class.

Really, Meyer? That's how this epic starts? You couldn't throw us a clever twist on frog dissection (like Spielberg did in E.T.) to show us the fragility of life, or discuss the qualities of white blood cells in protecting the body from invasion to counter the vampiric themes I'm hoping show up at some point, or the science of hormones in attracting a mate to contrast the undead Lothario making pee-yellow eyes at the lummox across from him?

I would like to say the mundane drivel that follows allows a break from my storyteller's rage, but the next scene has Bella's awkward and negative observations on seeing snow for the first time. She is judged harshly by the throng of youth engaging in snowball fights, like teenagers are wont to do with all those hormones stinking up the place. But wait? Didn't Bella grow up in Forks, Washington before her parents divorced? Unless Charlie kept her chained to a potty chair in the basement for the majority of her elementary years, the girl has seen snow before. Moreover, Chapter 3 has her driving in it. As a native to the inclement snowstorms of Ohio, I know for a fact that winter driving takes time to learn, let a lone in Bella's ancient Chevy truck her father bought her. (And while he chained her tires for her, he didn't sandbag the truck bed to allow for better traction, which is what real people do in wintry climes. Fuckyouverymuchstephaniemeyer.) The fan fic kicks into high gear when Bella neatly avoids being splattered by another car slipping on the ice.

Guess who rescues her? If you said Tuxedo Mask, you get my undying love. But no, it's just Edward.

In the flush of adrenaline that follows her near-death experience, Bella bitches that Edward was too far away to save her. On the goddamn icy road, she tells him his mortal limitations with the hand-print indentations in the car that would have made a more two-dimensional Bella than Meyer ever intended. Appropriately, he tells her to STFU. (Or in gamerspeak, "I just blew a blood point on celerity, bitch. Don't fuck this up for me.")

If Bella is in high school in early winter, and living with her father, then I assume she's a minor. If so, there is no goddamn reason in the world Charlie wouldn't be in the ER with her, and likely in a private room considering his status as Police Chief. But no, her observation is handled with Edward smirking at her side, the other driver with his inexplicably lacerated face, and Edward's father Dr. Cullen, who I immediately decided was David Hyde Pierce.

If you have a copy of Twilight, open it to Chapter 3 right now and read the dialogue in the hospital scene as if Kurt Hummel and Niles Crane were talking.

Now you know my joy. I'll pick up Bella's impending dream about Edward in Chapter 4 next time.

First Flags (Chapters 1 and 2)

I've heard a lot of grousing about Meyer's Mormon leanings, and the opening splash page with a Genesis warning against the tree of knowledge of good and evil explains the apple cover image. This isn't enough to be an actual warning flag, but I'm paying attention for Ricean bemoaning of eternal knowledge and existence. No, the first flag waves tenderly in the preface with the following line during the appropriately vague perspective of someone's death.

“When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to and end.”

Alongside Twilight, I'm reading Viktor Frankl's “Man's Search for Meaning,” which is dreadfully unfair to Ms. Meyer. But it struck me on page fucking one that if I found myself living a life more perfect and kick-ass than I ever imagined, I would sure as shit find it reasonable to mourn when it ended. This kind of phrase echoes from a pseudo-transcendent perspective popular among self-help gurus and cult leaders, and horribly romantic leads.

Thus my first mental error message flickered into being. Page. Fucking. One.

Chapter 1 introduces us to Bella, a bland heroine who is inexplicably distant to anyone she meets, paying lip service to social interaction while her hyperactive emotional sensitivity sends her in self-defeating spirals of teenaged angst over absolutely nothing. She is utterly misaligned with the universe. Friendless and awkward, Bella is fleeing a life of servitude to her dysfunctional mother, who I am assuming is a meth head or lapsed alcoholic. But upon arriving in her girlhood home in Forks, Washington, she tends to float about with no real attachment to her father, (a man she only refers to as “Charlie”,) or memories of growing up. From this, and her immediate decision to take up a domestic role for her father, I believe Bella is deeply emotionally stunted as a result of trauma in her childhood. My internal subtext decided that some uncle introduced her to “hide the pickle” early on, the fallout triggering the divorce and relocation to Arizona where her mother sought comfort at the bottom of a bottle. This would explain her lack of synchronization with her own body, resulting in her Sailor Moon level klutziness.

She meets the cool kids in high school. And by cool kids, I mean vampires. Meyer busts out the thesaurus for her adoration of brooding pretties, brought to penultimate perfection with Edward. Bella's spastic sense of self is only further maligned when Edward takes to a raging hate-on for her, furiously refusing to make eye contact to her as his lab partner and then arguing with the school administration to change classes to avoid her. Bella, heartbroken by childhood abuse and clinging to the role of caretaker in lieu of emotional connection to her family, processes Edward's actions as only she knows how; staggering gut-checks to her ego.

At this point I would like to pause and talk about visualization. When I read, I like to picture familiar faces to assist in remembering and savoring the story. For Twilight, I don't want to automatically use the actors from the movie. Thus I've decided that Bella is Michelle Trachtenberg from her first appearance in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Post-Harriet the Spy, pre-Eurotrip (I judge myself for having seen the latter,) Michelle's role as the preteen Dawn is the Wesley Crusher of BTVS, allowing me to both appreciate and loathe her visually. For Edward, Meyer constantly describes him as the most boyish of the vamps. Now, I had a mad-on for Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but Robert Pattison is too stylishly handsome to be “boyish”. To make things interesting, I decided upon Chris Colfer, or Kurt Hummel from Glee. Immediately the role of Bella's father, Charlie, went to Kurt's dad Burt as played by Mike O'Malley.

Giggling at the thought of Kurt smooching on Dawn, I returned to Chapter 2 and ran head first into fan fiction. Now, way back in the first days of the internet, I furiously keyed a few indigo epics of my own. I can recognize at a glance when a storytelling corner barks the shins of reality. And nothing says “lack of actual research” like Bella utilizing her father's jar labeled “Food Money” in order to go grocery shopping. What? The fuck? I know Meyer wants to beat us to death with how devout her heroine is to servitude. But for fuck's sake, her father is a goddamn chief of police. He makes more money than any other civil servant in BFE, Washington and can't be bothered with direct deposit? No, the divorce left him so socially backward that his only means of self-preservation was to remind himself with labels of his need to exist, thus the “Food Money” stash in the cupboard. What's next, “Face, not Throat” labels for his razors? A “Shit Here” post-it over the toilet? This is the man who has his television set to automatically shut off at midnight so he remembers to climb into bed and cry himself to sleep. I fear for the people of Forks. But it sure does explain Bella's dissociative personality disorder.

I gave up about the point where Bella actually broaches conversation with her father, an act that could trigger the development of a relationship, and he fucking shuts her down for judging the Cullens. Way to go, dad. I'll pick up the rest of Chapter 2 in my next post.

Why Twilight?

As an educated woman over thirty, my romantic vampire phase peaked with Anne Rice back in high school, following bouts of swooning over Zorro, Star Trek and Batman. (Yes, I was an am one of those tragically nerdish girls galumphing along a wavelength completely other than popular culture and thus my peers. We can move on from the vague horror of high school now and back to the car wreck of fiction at hand.) I can even recall a horrid piece of writing I penned my junior year, telling the story of Raven and her great undead secret. (No tragically nerdish girl can avoid traipsing morosely into the gothic nor avoid head-on collision with purple prose. Or the name Raven.)

Eventually I found grateful surcease with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and steered out of ultimate Losertown and back onto my engeeked , awkward path. I openly mocked the goth scene that rose from the fringes of subculture and spasmed melancholy in the spotlight. The vampires I wrote were clever monsters, dark sidhe, and only ever attained heroic beauty when stricken with soul, (R&B or otherwise.)

Busily ensconced in adulthood, a crumbling marriage and Dungeons & Dragons, the Twilight phenomena whooshed passed me completely. All I recall of the brief encounter with the trailer for the first movie was a sense of generalized confusion as to which one of the leads was the vampire, and why they were cavorting about in daylight. I'm going to call this the first warning flag, which I as an obedient nerdish girl dutifully obeyed and avoided the hell out of the movie and books.

Flash forward to 2010 and the end of my marriage, joyful if exhausting relocation to Las Vegas and brand new job as a bookseller at Borders, and I am choking on fucking Twilight. I can't sell anything without one of my beloved, crazy patrons trying to hook me on Meyer's books. And when a surge of potential sales floats beyond me because I don't know who the hell Bree Tanner is and why her novella should be a part of anyone's Twilight collection, the problem, dear reader, is not in the movie stars, but in myself.

Last night I brought home a copy of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight with the intention of learning the truth; is her storytelling atrocious? Is this version of the vampire myth any more bastardized and hackneyed than Rice or White Wolf? Am I justified in judging the series that is bringing more and more young readers into my bookstore the way Rowling did in the previous decade?

Come with me and follow my journey into Twilight.